An ongoing demand for higher linear bit density in electronic computer disk storage systems has resulted in the use of magnetic storage media with increased coercivity. At the same time, the present trend towards faster electronic data transfer rates has required a steady increase in the high-frequency performance of the magnetic recording heads used in such media for such purposes.
Consequently, inductive or magnetic recording heads capable of producing a larger "write" field at a higher rate are constantly in need. To meet this need, it is necessary to provide magnetic thin-films having significantly higher magnetic moment values (4.pi.M.sub.s) than are available in the currently used thin-film materials. The most currently used magnetic thin film material is a nickel-iron alloy (NiFe), commonly known as Permalloy, which has a magnetic moment value of about 9,500 to 10,000 Gauss.
The use of magnetic thin films having higher magnetic moment values will result in two main advantages. The use of such materials in a recording head will enable the recording head to write onto recording media with a proportionally higher coercivity so that a higher linear density can also be achieved. Further, the use of such materials permits the use of thinner recording head pole tips thereby extending their frequency response inversely with the square of their thickness. The use of thinner magnetic films can also simplify the process of manufacturing them. Further, in applications where the magnetic recording head is also used to read the stored data, the use of increasingly narrow poletips for such applications (to achieve higher track density) necessitates the use of a magnetic thin film material having an intrinsic anisotropy value significantly higher than that of Permalloy, both to make the recording head device less sensitive to stress-induced anisotropy and to render the size of edge domains in the thin film materials considerably smaller than the size of the poletip itself. The intrinsic anisotropy value of Permalloy is about 3 to 6 Oe. Thinner poletips also provide higher resolution and less interference from adjacent bits during reading.